Connected To My Roots

Alec Breve Mazzoni, Honduras

Alec Breve Mazzoni is a data scientist who was born and raised in Honduras. At 16 years old, he moved to the United States to pursue football with a high school scholarship and then at University of North Carolina. Alec remains a committed fan of the Honduran national team, traveling across the region to watch them play and arranging watch parties with his Honduran friends in San Francisco, complete with Honduran food, music, and dancing.

My name is Alec Breve Mazzoni. I am from Honduras, and I am 28 years old. Currently, I live in San Francisco, where I work as a data scientist. I was born and raised in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and moved to the United States aged 16. That said, I consider myself 100% catracho and my family is still in Honduras.

I support the Honduran national football team, and within Honduras, I support F.C. Motagua. I play soccer in a recreational league in San Francisco. I love football because it makes me happy, allows me to connect with friends, and it is the only place where I feel like I can forget about everything going on in life and just enjoy it. It is my comfort zone. 

My family is 100% Honduran. I express my national identity through food (baleadas, tamales, Zambos chips, pupusas), music (punta), and the clothes I wear. I love wearing the national team jerseys and I probably own four or five different ones. 

Staying Connected

I stay connected to my Honduran roots in the United States by spending time with other Hondurans. Some of my best friends in the city are Honduran and my partner is also Honduran. We get together, go out to eat, go out for drinks, and play soccer together. At times, some of my friends have made Honduran food and invited the rest of us to join. 

I also stay connected to my roots by watching the national team whenever they play and reading the Honduran sports website called Diario Diez. I travel within the United States whenever they come to watch them play, sing the national anthem every time I hear it in the stadium or on TV with great pride, get together with fellow Hondurans to watch the matches, and make Honduran food. One of my favourite traditions is that whenever we score, the players dance punta, a famous Honduran dance, and all the fans (including myself) go crazy and start dancing as well.

I started watching the national team at around eight years old. The first match that I saw live at the stadium was against Canada in 2008 for the 2010 World Cup Qualifiers. Since then, I have probably gone to 10 matches. I have seen the national team play in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula in Honduras, as well as multiple cities in the United States. 

In summer 2021, I travelled to Denver, CO to watch Honduras play in the first ever Concacaf Nations League Final Four, in which Honduras got the bronze medal. Most recently, I saw the team play in San Pedro Sula, Honduras against Canada in 2022 while I was visiting family back home. Typically, I go to the matches with my family. 

My highlight watching the Honduran national team was when we qualified to the 2010 World Cup, our first in 28 years. The low moments watching the team are happening right now - the team came in last place in the final round of Concacaf “Hexagonal” qualifiers for the 2022 World Cup, not winning a single game.

From Motagua To Chapel Hill

I started playing at a young age, probably around six years old. Back in Honduras, I played in several youth teams, including with the reserves of Motagua, the second biggest club of Honduras.

I moved to the United States at 16 after getting a high school scholarship to play at St. David’s School in Raleigh, North Carolina. I had to overcome many barriers to do this - I lived with an American host family that I had never met for two years and had to adapt to American culture. Being away from family at a young age was very difficult.

I then stayed on the East Coast for college at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. I played club soccer in college, winning the NIRSA Club Soccer National Championship in 2015, the first ever for my school. That was the highlight of my soccer journey. During my last year of college, I was co-captain of the club soccer team. Nowadays, I just play recreationally with friends.

A Honduran Community

The photos were taken in three locations: at the soccer field where I play with my friends in San Francisco; at my home in San Francisco, where I watched Honduras-Mexico with my Honduran friend; and at my partner’s home where we watched Honduras-Haiti in the final match of the group stage. 

All the guys are my Honduran friends from my soccer team. The most special person (and the only woman) in the photos is my partner. She also happens to be Honduran, and we met at a young age in Honduras at around 13 years old. We enjoy watching the team play together.

I tried to capture us having fun and doing the things we love - playing soccer, eating Honduran food, and watching the national team play. 

Supporting The Next Generation

Honduras has a lot of issues. Football is so important to the country because it lets us forget about all those problems for a couple of hours. It also brings the country together and the team generally makes us proud of being Honduran. 

One dream that I have is to watch Honduras play at a World Cup. The upcoming 2026 World Cup in the United States would be amazing since I already live here! I am hoping the stars align and this dream can become a reality.

I believe Honduras has a lot of footballing talent, and you can ask anyone in the region and they will tell you the same. However, the youth teams need more support - better training pitches, better stadiums, more agents, more international exposure through youth competitions. I hope in the future we can give the younger generations this support so that Honduras can reach its full potential in football.